


The Unmarked Way

by ecphrasis



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Order of the White Lotus, Pai Sho, Self-Exile, Tao Te Ching, Taoist Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:54:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25299457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecphrasis/pseuds/ecphrasis
Summary: When the great Tao is forgotten,Kindness and morality arise.When wisdom and intelligence are born,The great pretense begins.When there is no peace within the family,Filial piety and devotion arise.When the country is confused and in chaos,Loyal ministers appear.Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching trans. Gia-Fu Feng & Jane EnglishA brief perspective on how Iroh might have come to join the Order of the White Lotus.
Relationships: Iroh & Jeong Jeong (Avatar), Iroh & Lu Ten, Iroh & Ozai (Avatar)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	The Unmarked Way

He followed a path he knew only by instinct. His feet were unshod, his clothes worn but well-mended, his satchel empty, and his waterskin nearly so, but his hunter’s eye had caught the faint, broken outlines of the trail, and his body had followed, weaving through the thick forest in the wastelands of the Earth Kingdom, the sun casting only a scant brightness through the green leaves of spring.

It had been more than a year since his son’s death, and he was able, some mornings, to breathe without feeling that his lungs had been punctured.

It had been more than a year since he had buried his son’s crushed bones beneath the sodden battlefield of Ba Sing Se, and some nights he did not wake himself with sobs.

It had been more than a year since he had disbanded the army, since his father had perished, since his brother had claimed the title of Fire Lord in his absence, but Iroh had yet to rouse himself to anger.

He came upon the camp without expecting it, and yet, seeing the fourteen tents laid out in a circle before the bright river, he was not surprised. Only the emptiness of his hand, his lack of host-gift, stopped his approach, but a scout saw him and called out in a wary tone,

“Who are you, and how did you find us?”

“A wanderer,” he responded, holding his hands up to show he carried no weapon, no sword to incite terror, or spear to threaten harm, but only calloused palms and aging fingers. “I followed your trail.”

“We do not often suffer strangers,” the man said, but his voice was doubtful.

“I am hungry and thirsty,” he said. “If you would let me go, I will perish, and not reveal your secret. I cannot walk out of the forest without water, and I am weak without food. But if you feed me, then you will have to trust me.”

“You are an old man,” the guard said. “My father would be your age, if he were alive.” And his son would be the guard’s age, if he still lived. “We have rations enough to spare for a traveler, but once you have eaten and drunk and bathed and slept, you must meet my lord and speak with him.”

“What does your lord do?” He asked.

“My lord does not do,” the guard said. “Though a soldier, he does not fight, and though a warrior, he does not kill. He is a firebender without breathing fire, and although homeless, the whole earth is his home.”

The old man heard, and understood, and knew the lord’s name without being told. He was brought before a bright fire, and seated beside a band of young, armed men, and he was given a bowl to share their rich stew, and a cup to share their clear water and their bitter wine. At first they looked at him uneasily, and one rose to alert the unnamed lord, but he accepted their hospitality with gratitude, and they did not reject him as their guest.

The youngest boy asked for permission to tell him a story, and the old man, struck by the kindness of the offer, made the sign that the child should continue. His own son often enjoyed regaling his father and grandfather with their people’s tales, and this child, some stranger’s son, offered up one tale of Agni’s munificence to men, granting them the ember’s lingering life, so they would not struggle to reignite dead fires. The old man thanked him, his eyes blurry with unshed tears, and he was offered an instrument to make music.

His hands traced the enamel coating, the bear-gut strings, the wooden bowl, and he allowed a simple song to slip from his mind to his fingers, not conscious of choosing it, but accepting it nonetheless. An old song, one that his wife often used to hum unaware, a song of the mountain peoples of the Black Cliffs.

“You are one of us then, Father,” a soldier said, when he had struck the last note. “An outcast of the Fire Nation?”

“I was not cast out, I chose to leave,” he said. 

“If you have left, you will not be welcome back,” another responded, stirring the fire with a charcoal-hardened stick.

“My son perished before the walls of Ba Sing Se,” he said. The wound in his heart welled up with blood, as always. “And I have made a pilgrimage to seek his spirit.”

“Your pain is known to us, Father,” one of the young men murmured, and another, in a breach of decorum but a surfeit of courtesy, rested his hand on the old man’s shoulder. 

One of the youths called for a bath to be drawn for him in a wooden tub, and although the old man was a firebender, and the young man who stood close to him, as both guard and companion, shared his talent, neither warmed the water beyond the temperature of the river, so he bathed in the icy runoff of the distant grey mountains, and soaped himself with lye, and plaited his long, loose hair, and allowed the youth to trim back his bushy beard with a razor.

When he was clean and the bathwater was dirty, he was given a spare roll of bedding, and he laid down before a crackling fire and slept to the sound of low voices telling tales. 

He awoke as the dawn sun crept above the horizon, although he could not see it through the thick copse of trees. A warm, golden light filtered through the greening leaves, and the faint chill of winter lingered on the wind. He washed himself again in the frigid river, and dressed in borrowed clothing, and he ate breakfast with a group of garrulous young soldiers who sprawled easily on the ground and exuded the complacent confidence of youth.

The food was different from the usual, spicy fare of the Fire Nation, and while he had originally found it bland and tasteless, when paired with a fresh-steeped tea, he discovered it was pleasing to his palate, and comfortable to his stomach.

“The lord will see you, if you will see him, Father,” the same guard from the previous night said.

“I will see Admiral Jeong-Jeong,” he responded, aware of the silence that followed his statement, but careless of the shocked faces of the young men.

“He is a spirit,” one muttered to his companion, and the old man did not correct him.

He was conducted to the central tent, around which all the others, like spokes of a wheel, were arranged, and the flap was held aside, and he bowed before he entered, and ducked his head, and met the gaze of the Fire Nation’s highest-ranking deserter.

“I heard and my heart thought it might be you, though my mind rejected the idea,” the former Admiral said.

“I looked for you for many years without luck,” the old man responded. “And now that I no longer wish to find you, I have come upon you and your camp.”

“You are our guest, then,” the old soldier said, and by invoking the ancient rite, thus prevented him from revealing the secret of their location.

“And you my unexpected though my honored host,” the old man responded, and the Deserter relaxed, and gestured for him to sit before a blazing fire.

“We had news of Lu Ten’s death,” Jeong Jeong said. 

“What a Fire Lord he would have made!” the old man lamented, and Jeong Jeong shook his head.

“No, my friend. He would have been dreadful, as you would have been, as your brother is, as your father was, and your grandfather before him.” The fury he had long grown used to, the ire roiling in his stomach, was absent, and in its place only the dull, cold ache of loss. As a younger man, he would have spit fire rather than hear such a thing, but as an old one, he could not rouse himself so easily.

“Do you hate your people so much, Admiral?”

“No, my friend. I love them. Drink my tea, play a game of Pai Sho with me, and as you play I will tell you the truth.”

“I’ve no skill for old games.”

“It’s a custom of old men to adopt old games, and you and I are not young. I will begin first.” The deserter poured him a cup of piping hot jasmine tea, and considered the board carefully, selecting a tile for his starting gambit.

“The White Lotus is defensive, I thought?” the old man questioned. He knew the rules of Pai Sho, of course, and when he was younger he used to play it with Ozai, or occasionally even with Azulon, but he had had precious little time to play games while on campaign against Ba Sing Se.

“Some still cling to the old ways,” the Deserter said, with a distant smile, and the old man countered him as best he knew how, the Rockweed tile in the Low Valley feint. “Tell me, old friend,” the Deserter said, effortlessly responding, knocking his offensive attack aside and setting up the first step in the six-part ring. “Why are the people starving?”

“There hasn’t been a famine in years,” he said. Certainly he had never gone hungry, nor his soldiers. If there were shortages at home, they were understandable, a sacrifice all must make for the Cause.

“Why are the people rebellious?” The deserter ignored his rebuttal, and he set down his white jade in a seemingly arbitrary move. Perhaps he had simply selected a place to lay his first harmony.

“No one would dare to rebel.” The old man protested, but he had walked away from command of an army, and he was seated before his country’s most wanted enemy. He had even hired another deserter to train his nephew in swordsmanship. Perhaps rebellion was more frequent than he, as Crown Prince, had been led to believe. He tried to knock his opponent’s harmony from the board with another knotweed tile, and saw too late that the harmony moved on the horizontal as well as the vertical, and he had sacrificed his piece for no result.

“Why is death viewed so cheaply?” The former Admiral demanded. He laid down his white jade, and drew the first full harmonic line.

“I do not view death cheaply!” Iroh said, almost shouted. The temperature in the tent ticked up a degree, and the old deserter merely gazed at him.

“You threw your son’s life away before the walls of another’s city, seeking conquest where harmony should have sufficed. You led hundreds of your people, poor and desperate, to perish beneath the crushing weight of the Earth King’s defenses. All your life, you have followed a path that you believe will bring glory, honor, and greatness, but instead you have discovered the way to the death of a people, of a nation, of your son. Will your nephew be next? Your niece? Your late wife’s hundred cousins in the hills? How much is conquest worth to you, Iroh?”

“Nothing, nothing!” He burst out, the game forgotten. “I would give back all the conquered lands, I would revive the Air Nomads, I would recall the Avatar, if only I could hold my son again!”

“My old friend,” Jeong Jeong said, and touched his shoulder. “Your pain is pain that I have known myself. We all have, here. There are more of us than you would think. You cannot recall your son from his grave, any more than you can raise the Air Nomads, but there is a way to foster harmony, to end the war, and to find peace. I believe you want peace, Iroh.”

“I do,” the old man said, wretchedly.

“Then play Pai Sho with me, and I will teach you the meaning of the White Lotus.”


End file.
